In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a network notifies exact system bandwidth adopted by an uplink (UL) and a downlink (DL) to each terminal in the network through broadcast signaling, and then the terminal determines resource allocation granularity of some resource allocation methods according to the number of Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) included in the system bandwidth. Afterward, through resource allocation signaling, the network sends specific resource allocation information to the terminal that needs to transmit data, and the terminal determines a time-frequency resource location allocated specifically by the network according to information of the received resource allocation signaling, and sends or receives data on the corresponding time-frequency resource location, so as to implement data transmission and communication between the network and the terminal.
In an advanced LTE (LTE-A) system, a possible solution for supporting large bandwidth is to aggregate multiple component carriers, namely, schedule resources of the multiple component carriers to be used by one terminal at the same time. Spectrum occupied by the multiple component carriers may be continuous or discontinuous; bandwidth of the component carriers may be the same or different; each component carrier may be a carrier compatible with an LTE terminal, or may only be a carrier supporting an LTE-A terminal. If the component carrier supports only the LTE-A terminal, the LTE terminal is incapable of performing data transmission or communication on this LTE-A carrier. In the prior art, to support features of the LTE-A system, not only a carrier is configured as a carrier supporting only LTE-A terminal, but also some PRB resources are configured in a component carrier as resources unavailable to the LTE terminal. On such resources, design can be performed on requirements, such as a pilot structure, of the LTE-A system, and the design may be different from that of a backward system, so that the features of the LTE-A system are supported, the carrier bandwidth configuration different from the bandwidth of the LTE system is supported, each component carrier is a backward-compatible carrier, and flexibility of system design is increased.
In the process of implementing the present invention, the inventors find at least the following problems in the prior art: in a carrier of an existing LTE-A system, some PRB resources may be configured as unavailable to an LTE terminal; if PRB sorting is performed on all PRB resources in a sequence similar to that of Resource Blocks (RBs) of an LTE system, such processing as RB grouping or hopping mapping is performed on the PRB resources accordingly, and then resource allocation is performed on the PRB resources, conflict and congestion may occur at the time of allocating LTE resources and LTE-A resources, so that an LTE-A terminal cannot be well compatible with the LTE terminal in this carrier.